Despite falling prices in Okanagan, Kamloops homes worth $200K more than before pandemic
The Okanagan and Kamloops, like the rest of Canada, are seeing a sharp decline in real estate sales and a gradual eroding of prices from the peak last spring.
Higher interest rates are blamed for the current slowdown but the size of the decline is relative.
Data released, Oct. 14, by the Canadian Real Estate Board shows that home prices (for all categories combined) for the Interior of B.C. are up 47% from three years ago and 53.8% from five years ago. A home at today’s benchmark price of $678,900 for the region was selling for $461,837 three years ago and $441,417 five years ago.
That’s a gain of $217,000 in the past three years.
READ MORE: Okanagan housing prices rising faster than rest of B.C.
While that’s a decline from the high point this spring, homeowners are still well ahead of where they were pre-pandemic.
In the Central Okanagan, the median price in March for all housing types was $850,000 and dropped by almost $79,000 by September.
For someone living in the same home for the past three years that means, they have lost about $80,000 on paper from the peak last spring but are still more than $200,000 ahead of where they were in 2019.
Will those gains from 2019 last?
An RBC newsletter issued Friday predicts prices in B.C. will drop another 16% by next spring. Today’s benchmark price in the B.C. Interior of $678,900 could drop by $57,000, leaving the home worth only $160,000 more than it was three years ago.
READ MORE: CREA reports home sales in typically busy September continued to slow
Even though housing sales have slowed and interest rates are expected to rise further, we live in uncertain times.
“It makes for an interesting dynamic, one that doesn’t really have many historical precedents,” Jill Oudi, chair of the Canadian Real Estate Association, said in a news release. “The market has changed so much in the last year, and the adjustment to higher borrowing costs is still underway.”
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